Financial Status and Test Scores

When researching PSAE scores for my last blog post, I came across a very interesting blog post which I believe was written by a concerned parent in the Proviso school district. The post explored PSAE test score data, looking for a connection between the amount of low income students at public Illinois schools and the test scores of that school. The post can be found here, and the post before it from which the data is here. Earlier in the year, as a class we discussed the clear correlation between income and test scores, and considering that both are on average very high at New Trier, it is definitely worth looking critically at this data. The first post contains data about the amount of low income students at each school, the percentage of passing PSAE scores at the school, and the amount of money spent per student at the school. In the second post, the author uses the data to find the percentage of non-low income students that meet or exceed PSAE standards. The first thing I noticed was that New Trier had both the highest test scores and least number of low income students in all of Illinois. I also noticed that at ETHS almost 100% of non-low income students pass the PSAE, while only about 66% of the whole school meets the standards. This huge difference in test scores between students of different financial status is even more alarming because the students attend the same school. This data definitely supports Doc Oc's point from when we discussed this earlier in the year, that standardized tests measure socioeconomic status rather than knowledge.